Extreme Philosophy
Do you consider any philosophical position extreme and with disturbing or bizarre consequence?
Some positions fitting this description might be.
1 Nihilism (Life is meaningless)
2 Moral skepticism ( Moral Knowledge is impossible)
3 Idealism (The non physical universe)
4 Solipsism (only the self exists)
5 Antinatalism (procreating is bad)
6 Eliminative materialism (mental states don't exist)
7 Property is theft (anarchism)
Philosophy attempting to make things intelligible or does it have no boundaries on what position is reached or defended?
Some positions fitting this description might be.
1 Nihilism (Life is meaningless)
2 Moral skepticism ( Moral Knowledge is impossible)
3 Idealism (The non physical universe)
4 Solipsism (only the self exists)
5 Antinatalism (procreating is bad)
6 Eliminative materialism (mental states don't exist)
7 Property is theft (anarchism)
Philosophy attempting to make things intelligible or does it have no boundaries on what position is reached or defended?
Comments (33)
Of course it has no boundaries. Where would they come from, philosophy, no? Also I find thee list odd. why is private property any less extreme then the idea of not having private property?
It is extreme to go against the current wide spread acceptance of private property.
By extreme I did not mean incorrect but making claims that would challenge norms or suggest we need to change our views or action radically.
Quoting Tobias
The boundaries would be required to make sense.
I think nihilism makes the meaning of philosophy fail. We accept certain meanings to communicate.
Why? Once it was extreme going against the widely held belief in God or witches... Once it was considered extreme to think that homosexuality should not be outlawed....
Quoting Andrew4Handel
By that light indeed, many philosophical positions are extreme or lead to extreme consequences. Peter Singer's utilitarianism comes to mind or Nozick's proviso in his libertarianism.
\Quoting Andrew4Handel
Is there anyone that really held such a view? I think certain philosophical positions are incoherent. I do not think they are 'extreme', just incoherent.
The consequences of outlawing private property is more extreme than decriminalising homosexuality and witchcraft.
I included Property being theft with anarchy and the general breakdown of social norms. IT could be described a form of nihilism about unscientific claims.
Quoting Tobias
I think what makes a position is extreme is when it is enacted. People experience philosophical nihilism and a breakdown of personal meaning which I have done myself in the past.
I think even people who know nothing about academic philosophical terms could reach a nihilistic conclusion.
They might mistakenly commit suicide haven come to a false conclusion about reality.
I think communism was a big mistake that lead to mass oppression and mass murder even if its principles initially seemed reasonable.
I think we sometime have an extreme position or conclusion but supress it because we realise we have to keep up a pretence of shared values for security.
Not really because no matter what the position people seem to hold, as soon as they leave the keyboard or the class room, they mostly enter the quotidian world of realism, cause and effect, common sense, and ordinary moral agreements.
:up:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
These are caricatures (as you express them) or coubterfactual thought-experiments, not "extremes".
That makes philosophy seem a bit like a game where people hold positions for fun or out of curiosity.
I have actually lived as a nihilist (I won't go into details)
I feel like philosophy is restrained by people downplaying the level of disagreement and the strength of a position.
As a moral nihilist (currently not permanently, hopefully) I think saying that Genocide or slavery is wrong is meaningless. It may be that as with tsunamis and the rest of nature extreme brutality and harm is just a feature of nature which is neither good nor bad It means moral values are personal preferences, sentiments, and emotions but that nothing "wrong" has ever happened and that we probably cannot justify prisons or punishments and telling people how they ought to behave.
Quoting Tom Storm
I must have the wrong map, then.
More often than not extreme is used to dismiss a philosophy on the premise that it is too far outside a certain consensus, which is mostly an appeal to tradition or the populace. Any thinker worth a straw ought to be able to entertain a philosophy without accepting it, and do so on its merits rather than its proximity to mainstream opinion. Lastly, philosophies do not have consequences. So philosophy ought to have no boundaries on what position is reached or defended.
I think people often hold views on subjects that make little difference to how they life. And no, I am not saying that beliefs don't have an affect. Most nihilists I've known have mortgages, send their kids to good schools, tend to their garden and are fond of food. Just saying....
Quoting Joshs
Maybe. But at least you have a map. All I got was a pare of flip flops. :razz:
But I think it is likely you would not feel comfortable or want to gun down children even if you were allowed. We're a social species, we have empathy, we are part of a culture of agreements and values and options which intellectual positions don't readily override.
But that doesn't apply to me. I have always been philosophically minded and responded with actions to my beliefs because I need to be motivated by good reasons or reasoning per se.
I don't have a desire to gun down children but the Nazis did. Atrocities happen because someone humans wanted to do them. It would be great if we had good moral intuitions but humans display a wide range of behaviour from self sacrifice and kindness to extreme brutality.
Laws as in the proposed laws of physics can be unbreakable but moral opinions are easily overridden or disagreed with.
As I said 'most' not all.
Personally, I've never been overly hung up on reasoning. I base most of my choices on what feels right and don't overthink or ruminate. I like not having a plan and am content to play ball with all my inherited and encultured values, strengths and flaws.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Sure and you'll note that Nazi's were obsessed with morality and purity and thought they were doing good. Much of their thinking inherited from the Christian anti-Semitism of Martin Luther.
Yes, and no.
Yes to the first half: I consider some philosophical positions extreme, some absurd, some outlandish and some just wrong. That's an opinion, nothing more.
No to the second: I do not think a philosophy has disturbing or bizarre consequences. They're just thought-experiments, the dance of one human mind with its ideas.
If a philosopher formulates a theological or political policy on which to organize a society, it's still only a proposal. When a powerful enough faction subscribes to the philosophy and takes up the policy as its agenda, only then does it have consequences.
Given human nature, they're nearly all bizarre.
God worship and dogmatism bothers me. Anything that places beliefs above the boundaries of acceptable logic and and any belief that is illogical really bothers me.
Purposelessness of existence is okay by me... cera cera, laissez faire, take it easy baby, menage troix, fait vous jeux, let it be. Rien de va plus. Vada veia ciap. Vada veia ku. Pint'e dama. Pn'otos. Ja hcem kohach cheum s tobou. Himmeldonnerwetter.
Moral skepticism does not exist. There is a clear and wonderful non-religious explanation to morality and ethics. It is clear why it exists, how it works, and what it does. I explained it and got no critical comments on it on this site. People really don't like new ideas.
I grew up with a lot of hell and damnation and The sect I grew up in tends to believe most people are going to hell and most Christians are not true Christians.
But the belief in hell is widespread and I find it shocking, brutal and inhumane, frightening etc.
I don't think it or religion per se are positions reached through philosophy but they are extreme positions that people don't seem to appreciate how extreme they are.
To hold an extreme position in philosophy may just mean it is far away from positions held by society or other people.
Quoting god must be atheist
Do you mean most people have moral attitudes and opinions? I would agree with that.
What I have a problem with is the notion of moral facts or moral truths.
We probably have to act as if morality were real though. We can be agnostic about moral truths and maybe just have a no harm principle.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Agreed. With moral nihilism you can still have values, but with absolute nihilism nothing matters. That's a dangerous view.
They don't strike me as weird as they reflect lived experience. But I understand philosophers may find them weird.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, this is odd.
Quoting Bylaw
No question. I would not say realism is 'true' (I dislike this word) but I would say we are mostly compelled to live as though it were real.
Yes, albeit with a small example, namely, stuff that some people actually do take seriously, which is philosophical pessimism or even untenable positions like solipsism...
My concern is the resulting incoherence of philosophical pessimism with stuff like the increase in living standards, which it so frequently criticizes with people like Marx. Or the incoherence of solipsism, which just doesn't make sense.
And, it goes without saying that some philosophers are mad.
You left out the most extreme...
0. Analysis: doggedly tearing all the others into pieces.
I feel you, brother: "Killing me softly with your thong".
Quoting Banno
Anal Isis: the Egyptian Goddess of trying to breath life into excrement.
All true. And yet analytic method is ubiquitous.
Quoting Tobias
As do I. A vague distaste for "extreme philosophy" being something for real men to get into, balls deep.
As if the point were to get it wrong in the loudest way possible.
That's true, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, phenomenology and even PoMo are also full of it
(analysis that is :wink: ); but analysis, like shit, comes in many forms: it all depends on one's diet.
Dear Andrew, since you asked, I would like to offer for your reading pleasure two pieces I wrote, identical in topic, different writing styles. (Difference is that one is short and terse, the other goes into explanations deeper and more detailed.)
Some people read these papers, and they attacked it in ridiculously incongruent bases. They either never read the paper but just scanned it or read only parts of it. One person kept on disagreeing with some items on a list, and he did not see that I put the list together of what I disagree with too.
It was hopeless.
If you like, read the two articles. They talk about precisely the same topic, in the precisely identical opinion, but one is wordy, the other one is condensed.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10744/ethics-explained-to-smooth-out-all-wrinkles-in-current-debates-neo-darwinist-approach
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10903/shortened-version-of-theory-of-morality-some-objected-to-the-conversational-style-of-my-paper
I look at embracing philosophical trends and views, and advocating them, defending them, and disproving views not in agreement with them, as more of a custodianship than anything else.
:smirk:
:up: